I'm a little late to the party, but this is my bullying satisfaction tale.

When I was in sophomore year, like teenagers are wont to do, I was trying to find "my identity" and adopted a sort of dark/Gothic attire to align with my angtsy 15-year-old girl mindset, though I was very personable and had many friends in different cliques. I wasn't like the goth kids in South Park, to give some context.

There was this one little fucking asshole. I still remember his name. James Spencer. He wasn't even taller than I, maybe shorter, so here was a <5'6" turd with a perpetual smirk and he took it upon himself to hassle me every time I was walking to my first class. He and his posse of spiky gel-haired minions and their girls would giggle and egg him when he'd stop me to yell some snarky shit at me -- which was almost every single day for months.

Finally, I had enough. I didn't know this guy. I was certain some of the girls in the group were in my classes and felt betrayed by the loss of allegiance to teenage girlhood. I was furious that this shit singled me out for whatever arbitrary reason, so one morning when he approached me, instead of ignoring him and continuing to go on my walk like I did every day, I stopped dead in my tracks.

The gasps and "ooohs" from his group (which fluctuated between 10-15 people) still resonate in my ears almost 15 years later. They were not expecting that. I don't even remember what he was saying, but he stopped in mid-sentence when I whipped my head around and stared him down. I opened my mouth to utter one thing:

"You cut this shit out. You wouldn't want another Columbine to happen, would you?"

I hitched my backpack over my shoulder and walked away. And, needless to say, I was terrified. I knew I had just made a very severe but empty threat -- a threat that I would never, ever, ever, ever act upon -- and waited all day for the proctors to come and take me to the principal's office. It never happened. And James never, ever bullied me again. I still regretted what I had said, because I am not a violent person and I never had even seen a gun in person when I was a teenager. I was just exhausted from being bullied so much, I said the first thing that I thought would be the scariest.

I'm sure he's a fine and lovely person now, so I wish him no ill will, but 15-year-old he was a reprehensible asshole.